


and i cry because i think of what we could've been but never were

by primrosee



Series: puzzle pieces that don't quite fit together [3]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alpha Timeline, M/M, Post-Scratch, a bit of underage, john isn't even fucking in it but it's hella johndave, mature to protect my ass, warning: there is death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-06
Updated: 2017-04-06
Packaged: 2018-10-15 10:48:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10555064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/primrosee/pseuds/primrosee
Summary: but i laugh because i know that you wouldn't be crying about it, because when would you ever?





	

**Author's Note:**

> i've been trying to write a psychostriders fic but writer's block was kicking my ass rip
> 
> so i got myself back in the groove with this and i know it's gonna be a surprise but...i actually liked it for once. me? liking my own writing? fucking insane

He is small, quiet, and best friends with your son. That’s about all you know of Jake English, the neighbor kid who lives with his grandmother who is still a better shot than you even though she has two types of terminal cancer. You feel like you should know more about him, since he’s best friends with your kid and all, but you just aren’t the type of parent who—what’s the word?—participates in your kid’s life. You’re an asshole by nature, so it would only make sense that you’re an asshole as a parent, too. It’s not like you’re leaving him hungry, or anything. You make sure he has the shit he needs, you just aren’t a big part of his life. You’ve made peace with that. You think he might have, too. He has friends, why would he need his big bro all over him?

Aside from Jake English, your son is also friends with two girls, Jane and Roxy. You don’t know their last names, but you do know that Roxy’s mom is a drunk and Jane’s dad bakes at least three cakes a day. You don’t usually see the girls, at least, not in your apartment. Jake English, on the other hand, is at your apartment at least four times a week. The first time he meets you, he gushes out, “Mr.Strider, I’m so pleased to meet you, your movies are the bees knees,” and you half-smile, offer to give him an autograph, and tell him to call you Dave.

When Jake is over, he and Dirk usually spend the time locked away in Dirk’s bedroom, doing whatever it is they do. It could be having sex, it could be watching movies. You could care less. More often than not, Jake English spends the night at your house, and you really don’t mind. It gives his grandmother time to rest, and that’s good, because every time you see her she looks a little more worn down, a little more frail.

Jake English has a shitty taste in movies, green eyes, black hair, and a knack for adventure. There’s something not quite right about him—maybe it’s the way he talks, his accent, his name, his eyes, his interests. He reminds you of someone, but you can’t remember who.

;;

Slowly, Jake English starts to wear you down. It’s not his fault, really—it’s yours, more than anything. Because every time you look at him he looks a little more off, with that tan skin, those green eyes, and that accent. He says words like “gadzooks,” and his movie taste is shitty, but not in the right way. He always smiles at you, always says, “Hello, Mr.Strider!” and when Dirk isn’t around, he always asks you about your movies, compliments you on your work. After a while, you think he starts to sense that you don’t like him, which makes Dirk hate you even more. Or maybe it’s the fact that when Jake comes over, it starts being less about Dirk and Jake and more about Dave and Jake.

TT: Roof. Now. Strife.

You dig around for your katana—you haven’t used it in years—and make your way to the roof. You’ve barely stepped foot on the concrete ground when you’re being slashed in the face with a freshly sharpened blade, and you fall back in surprise. Your little bro—who isn’t so little anymore—is standing over you, fuming. “Leave Jake alone,” are the first words out of his mouth, and you shake your head, try to stand back up. You are stopped by your bro’s foot on your chest, and damn, when did the kid get so strong? “I mean it.”

“Whaddya think I’m tryin’ to do, fuck him? Listen, I think it’s cute you like him and all, but—”

“I don’t like him, he’s my best friend.”

“—kid, I know you. I raised you.”

“You don’t fucking know me, you’re barely part of my life. My friends are all I have, and now you’re trying to take that away from me, too. You’re the worst Bro in the history of Bro’s.”

You scoff, grab Dirk’s foot while he’s distracted, and knock him down. “Am I, really? Have you ever been forced to eat nothin’ but Doritos and tap water for dinner? Have I ever hit you outside of us strifing? Did you ever go hungry for weeks? No, you fucking didn’t. But I  _ did.  _ Yeah, I’m a goddamned asshole who doesn’t participate in your life, but I ain’t the worst Bro.  _ My  _ Bro was the worst fuckin’ Bro in the history of Bro’s, and if you’d like to find him and live with him instead, you can gladly do that.”

Before Dirk can reply, you make your way off of the roof and back into the apartment, totally forgetting about your katana. You’ll come back for it later. Jake English is waiting for you at the last ladder rung, kicking invisible dirt around. “Heard everythin’, huh kid?” You ask. He nods slowly and looks up at you, gasps and touches your face with his fingertips, says, “You’re bleeding.”

You shrug. “Meh, it ain’t too bad.”

He offers to take care of it for you, and you accept. When you look up to the roof, Dirk is balanced on the edge, looking down at you and Jake with a surprised look on his face. You look away before it can really sink in.

;;

“I quite admire you, Mr.Strider,” Jake says, dabbing at your wound with peroxide. You cringe backward like he slapped you, but he holds your face where it is. “Your movies may be confusing to most, but I find them invigorating. I haven’t seen films like yours in years.”

“How old are you, kid?” You ask. He smiles sadly and rubs antibiotic cream on your cheek with soft touches, covering it over with the biggest bandaid he could find in your flimsy medical supply. You’ve been reminding yourself to buy a new first aid kit for the past seventeen years, but you still haven’t gotten around to it. “Sixteen? Seventeen?”

He doesn’t answer your question. Your wound is clean and bandaged, but his hands are still on your face, and you’re afraid that this is going to lead to something pretty fucking illegal. “I do wish that Dirk liked me in the way that I do him,” he says, instead. “Sadly, he never seems to return my feelings. It’s sad, isn’t it, Mr.Strider? When you love someone so incredibly much, but you just cannot have them? Ah, how unfair life is—love, is.”

And he kisses you, inexperienced and hesitant. You can feel his eyelashes brushing against your cheeks, and when you close your eyes, you can almost fix his errors. You can make his green eyes blue, his tan skin pale, his small, hardly recognizable smile wide and excited. You can eliminate his accent, replace all of the weird words he says, erase who he is and make him who you want—need—him to be. “You wish I were someone else,” he says when he pulls back, matter of factly. “I’ve felt the feeling, before. From Dirk. Who do you wish I could be, Mr.Strider?”

You wish he could be—

_ a pale, blue-eyed boy from Seattle, with the widest smile you’ve ever seen, a father obsessed with baking him cakes for menial reasons, braces that clip your upper lip the first time you kiss him, the most musical laugh you’ve ever heard, expertise at the piano, and the taste in the right shitty movies. _

“Your grandma probably needs you,” you say carefully, sure to avoid his question. You aren’t sure why—maybe because you don’t want to hurt his feelings, or maybe because if you tell him the truth, it’ll be too real, it’ll hurt too much. “It isn’t exactly nice to leave your cancer-ridden grandma alone for this long, ain’t it?”

Jake English smiles, placid and practiced, sadder than you’ve ever seen before. For a second you almost cave, almost give him what he wants, just to feel skin-on-skin contact, just so you can shut your eyes and pretend that he’s someone else, if only for a second. “Yes, I suppose you’re right, Mr.Strider,” he replies, taking his hands off of your face and standing up. He straightens his outfit even though it isn’t crumpled at all, and then, he says, “thank you,” for no other reason than because he wants to. You watch him leave, wait for him to slam the door behind himself, but it never happens. He closes it softly, and you listen as his footsteps pad off down the hallway, listen as the elevator beeps and takes him to the ground floor.

TT: I’m sorry for being such a dick, Bro.

TT: Seriously. I know you’re a pretty good Bro aside from not really “participating” in my life, and it’s cool with me that you don’t.

TT: I know you aren’t trying to steal my friends away or anything.

TT: Guess I just overreacted a little.

TG: nah, its cool

TG: i could stand to be a little less of an asshole

You look at the closed wooden door to your apartment, and breathe a soft sigh.

;;

Jake English’s grandmother dies on a crisp autumn morning in nineteen-ninety-two. He bursts through your front door like he owns the place and pitches himself into Dirk’s arms, blubbering out his explanation through shaky sobs and substantially loud wails. Dirk rubs his back in comforting circles and you sneak out of the apartment and let them have their moment, heading over to the English household. You find Jake English’s dead grandmother in her bed, her eyes shut, covers pulled to her chin. She almost looks like she’s asleep. You give a sad, half-smile, even though she can’t see it. “Jade Harley,” you say, forgetting the whole “English” thing, because that was never her last name, not really. “You were one badass motherfucker.”

And for a silent moment, you can almost hear her laugh, loud and boisterous. You can almost see her green text on your screen, her shitty text hearts. Can almost remember her hugs, tight and crushing. In the simplest terms—you miss her. This version of her, maybe. But you really miss the other version of her, the one with long black hair and sparkling green eyes who was the best damn markswoman you’d ever met, who once grew a bottle of apple juice to the size of the Empire State Building for you. You laugh, and it is good.

;;

After his grandmother dies, Jake English is a fucking wreck. You find in her will that she gave you custody of the kid, and you shake your head because you just can’t believe it. She was his last living relative, and he was hers. He inherits her fortune, but it’s put into a trust fund that you control. The entire thing is written out in green glitter pen, and at the bottom, it says: jade english (harley)!!!! take care of my grandson, dave strider, you royal douche :) <3

You cry, right there, in front of the attorney, your son, and Jake English.

;;

There aren’t many people at Jade English’s funeral. You’re there, along with Jake’s two other friends next to your son, and their parents. You get stuck in the pew with the other parents, which is pretty much your worst nightmare. Roxy’s mom sits next to you, and Jane’s dad sits next to her. “Sad, isn’t it?” Roxy’s mom says, gently, a certain sadness in her purple eyes that you can definitely relate to. The sadness of missing someone who you knew in a different timeline, who you loved in a different timeline. “Funerals are always such a sad event. I’d like for my funeral to be a party. A celebration, of sorts. I would like people to cry of joy, rather than sadness.”

“I hear ya’, Lalonde,” you respond, and things feel close to normal, for a quick minute. But it’s gone as soon as it came, and you pretend you don’t mind, even though you do. “I want my funeral to have a fucking clown and puppies as party favors. I want it to go all out. People will be sobbing because they got a puppy instead of because I’m dead.”

Roxy Lalonde’s mother laughs, careful and nearly silent. “I agree.”

;;

You learn quickly that raising two kids is a hell of a lot harder than raising one. You need to buy double the food, double the clothes, and you have to shell out pretty much your life savings to buy Jake his own bed, because him and Dirk sleeping together in that cramped twin bed just isn’t working out for them. Dirk’s other friends start coming over a lot more frequently once they’re both living there. They’re all good kids. On the first day of summer, both of the girls sleepover, and they all pile into Dirk’s room which is already barely big enough to hold Dirk alone. They all fall asleep on the floor together, blankets haphazardly strewn over them, limbs tangled all over the place. You smile.

At one in the morning, one of them leaves Dirk’s room and joins you on the futon. It’s Jane Crocker. Her usually neat black hair is a mess, and the pearl necklace she always wears is nowhere to be found. “I brought you something,” she says, carefully, looking straight ahead at the television that’s playing a rerun of some shitty sixties show instead of at you. “Jake and Dirk spotted it in my room one day, and thought that you may appreciate it, for whatever reason. It belonged to my Poppop. He died before I was born.”

She roots through the back you hadn’t even noticed she had with her until now, and pulls out a picture, which she hands over to you quickly. Then, she slings her bag over her shoulder and rushes back into Dirk’s room. You hear Roxy Lalonde’s sleep-slurred voice say, “Janey, rules say you can’t leave the cuddle-puddle without warning someone!” and in return, Jane laughs.

You look at the picture frame she handed you. It’s a signed picture of some comedian from the fifties that you’ve seen on late-night television sometimes, but he can’t be more than thirteen in the picture. The edges are frayed and it has a sepia hue. It looks like whoever took the picture took it while he was in the middle of laughing. You turn it over. On the back, it reads “John Crocker — April 13th, 1940” in neat black handwriting. You turn it over again, and a note falls out.

Jake thought this photo of this old-ass comedian would mean something to you, so we’re trying to get Jane to give it to you. Hopefully she does.

But this is a photo of my grandfather!

We’re working on it.

dont worry guys i can def get janey 2 hand it over

drop it like its hot

I think you may know this man, Mr.Strider. Perhaps you wish someone else were him.

Why are you being so philosophical today, Jake? It’s a photograph of my grandfather. A very old one, at that, that I do not plan on handing over any time this century! Are we clear?

just give it up janey

apparently its important to mr strider

He barely would’ve been a thought when my grandfather was this young! I think, at least. He seems to be aging well. His true age is a mystery, to me, at least.

its a mystery

Totally.

Enjoy the photograph, Mr.Strider. I’m sure he missed you when he was alive, as well.

You make a weird noise, trapped somewhere between a laugh and a sob, and then you set the photo up on top of your fireplace. John Crocker smiles down at you from the mantle, and he almost seems real, but just for a moment

_ “Who do I play piano for? Well, it’s kinda supposed to be a mystery. What, you don’t like that answer? Alright, alright, stop booing me already. I’ll tell you. It’s this guy I’ve never met before. A dorky blonde guy who thinks he’s cool because he wears sunglasses and knows how to fight with a sword, or whatever. He might be real, but he might not be real. I remember him in this weird deja vu sense. You guys know what I’m talking about? Haha, yeah you do. It’s like losing a limb but still feeling like it’s there. I tell jokes for this guy and I play piano for him, even though he might not exist. But I’m pretty sure he does, so I do things for him subconsciously. My son thinks it’s weird, but what does he know? Aw, c’mon, don’t boo my son!” _

and it is good.

**Author's Note:**

> i hoped you like this, it took me like twenty tries to get the first sentence right
> 
> but hey, if you hated it, thanks for that view fam ;)
> 
> thank you for reading !! <3


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